SimCity Super NES Guide: Section 9

These two scenarios will only appear after you’ve successfully completed the first six. Go to the far right side of the scenario screen and move over one more space to get to them.

Las Vegas

This is the mother of all scenarios! For some reason, Sim Las Vegas is a popular target for UFO attacks. Must be all that stuff about being close to “area 51” or something. And after playing the 6 regular scenarios, it should come as no surprise that UFO attacks provide the same result as other disasters: fires.

But this time, there’s a new twist. Unlike the Bowser attack in Tokyo or the earthquake in San Francisco… the UFO attack is NOT a one-time event. The aliens visit your city multiple times. Just as you’re done cleaning up after one attack, another wave arrives to deal more damage.

On the bright side, you DO have some time to prepare before the first attack. Just as you did in San Francisco, pause the game as soon it starts. Check your fire coverage map and build new fire stations as needed. Then, all you can do is unpause and wait. Once the UFOs arrive, they’ll hit a few different places.

After the aliens leave, pause again and bulldoze around the fires so they can’t spread. Unpause the game so the fires can go out, then rebuild any power lines or zones that were lost in the attack. Then, just wait for the next UFO attack and repeat your cleanup routine.

Vegas has some pretty simple problems you can tackle in between attacks, or near the end after the last attack.

First of all, you’ll notice the city has tons of casinos, just like in real life. SimCity casinos generate crime, but they also provide revenue. Just build more police stations. Compare the crime map and the police coverage map to determine the best locations.

Second, there are tons of roads that go out to the middle of nowhere (the programmers must have been watching the movie “Casino” as they designed the maps). While these outlying roads don’t generate traffic or pollution, they will drain your annual transportation budget. Save money by bulldozing unused roads as soon as you get a free moment. (You could even do this when you first pause the game to build new fire stations if you want.)

Even within the city’s center, you can ALWAYS improve conditions by replacing roads with rails. You can also rearrange the zoning so the rail lines are straighter and more efficient, rather than zig-zagging all over the place. Even though the real-life Vegas would be strange with fewer casinos, the SimCity version doesn’t care if you knock down a few for the sake of cutting down on traffic and pollution.

Freeland

“If only I didn’t have that river, I could have built the 6 more zones I needed to hit 500,000 people.”

Freeland is your chance to test out that theory. Freeland is 100% land; there are no bodies of water “getting in the way” of your plans to use every single space on the map. There are no major problems to solve, no disasters to fix or deadlines to meet. Just like a regular city, you begin in 1900 and control Freeland for as long as you want.

But there’s one catch. You may have noticed you never earn gifts when you’re playing scenarios, even if you choose to continue playing a scenario city after you’ve successfully completed the scenario. Because Freeland is technically a scenario… no gifts there, either. No “Your House,” no Police HQ’s, no amusement parks, no train stations… not even the coveted Mario Statue for getting 500,000 population! If that’s not a big deal to you, then enjoy Freeland. But if it’s the Mario Statue you’re after, don’t waste your time here — just go back to regular mode. For your best chances of success, choose one of the landforms with the most land and the least water.

One more tip to remember for Freeland — as with any city, your SimCitizens will eventually start asking for a Seaport. Where do you build a seaport when you don’t have any bodies of water? Don’t worry — if you already read Section 4 of this guide, you remember that Seaports don’t need to be near water. The game’s simulation engine doesn’t care where the Seaport is — it only cares that one merely exists, period. Build it anywhere. As I suggested in Section 5, place the Seaport in one of the corners so most of the pollution goes off the edges of the map.